page_title: 63rd Street Tunnel
section_title: Completion of lower level
hierarchical_section_title: 63rd Street Tunnel / History / Completion of lower level
caption_attribution_description: Direct Fixation Fastener track installed in the 63rd Street tunnel. (CM007, 1-22-2018)
context_page_description: The 63rd Street Tunnel is a double-deck subway and railroad tunnel under the East River between the boroughs of Manhattan and Queens in New York City. It is the newest of the East River tunnels, and the newest rail river crossing in the New York metropolitan area.
  The upper level of the 63rd Street Tunnel carries the IND 63rd Street Line of the New York City Subway. The tunnel's lower level is unused, but will carry Long Island Rail Road trains to a new train terminal under Grand Central Terminal, following the expected completion of the East Side Access project by 2023.
  Construction of the 63rd Street Tunnel began in 1969, and the tunnel was holed through beneath Roosevelt Island in 1972. Completion of the tunnel and its connections was delayed by the 1975 New York City fiscal crisis and the upper level was not opened until 1989, twenty years after construction started. The lower level was never opened because of the cancellation of the LIRR route to Manhattan. The tunnel was initially referred to as the "tunnel to nowhere" because its Queens end did not connect to any other subway line until 2001.
context_section_description: Plans were made in 1995 to bring LIRR service to East Midtown, and had resurfaced by the turn of the century. By that time, the LIRR was the busiest commuter railroad in the United States, with an average of 269,400 passengers each weekday in 1999. Penn Station, located on the West Side, was operating at capacity due to a complex track interlocking and limited capacity in the East River Tunnels. In 1999, the MTA proposed a $17 billion five-year capital budget, which included a $1.6 billion LIRR connection to a new station under Grand Central Terminal, to be built as part of a project called East Side Access. The project's final environmental impact assessment (FEIS) was released in March 2001. Two months later, the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) gave a favorable "Record of Decision", a mark of approval, to East Side Access after reviewing the project's FEIS. The September 11 attacks underscored the need to bring LIRR service to Grand Central. As LIRR president Kenneth J. Bauer stated, "If something happened at the East River tunnel, you wouldn't be able to run trains to Penn Station." In 2002, Congress passed a bill that allocated $132 million for infrastructure projects in New York State, of which $14.7 million was to go toward funding East Side Access. Approval of a final design for East Side Access was granted in 2002, and the first properties for East Side Access were acquired in 2003.
  The construction contract for a 1-mile (1.6 km) tunnel in Manhattan westward and southward from the dormant lower level of the 63rd Street Tunnel to the new 100-foot-deep (30 m) station beneath Grand Central Terminal was awarded in July 2006. The first tunnel boring machine was launched westbound then southbound from the 63rd Street Tunnel in September 2007, and it reached Grand Central Terminal in July 2008. The second machine began boring a parallel tunnel in December 2007 and had completed its tunnel at 37th Street on September 30, 2008.
  On the Queens side, work included extending the tunnel under Northern Boulevard and boring four tunnels under Sunnyside Yard. This was a particularly delicate and expensive task due to the existence of the elevated BMT Astoria Line and the underground IND Queens Boulevard Line directly above. A temporary narrow-gauge railway and a conveyor belt system were constructed behind the tunnel boring machines and through the 63rd Street Tunnels to the Queens bell mouth. An $83 million cut structure was built, which extends the tracks under Northern Boulevard into the Sunnyside Yard, and then was covered with a deck. In September 2009, the MTA awarded Granite-Traylor-Frontiere Joint Venture a $659.2 million contract to employ two 500-ton slurry tunnel boring machines to create the tunnels connecting the LIRR Main Line and the Port Washington Branch to the 63rd Street Tunnel under 41st Avenue. The four tunnels, with precast concrete liners, total 2 miles (3.2 km) in length. The two tunnel boring machines began digging on the Queens side in April 2011. On December 22, 2011, breakthrough was achieved in Tunnel "A" of the four Queens tunnel drives from the 63rd Street Tunnel bellmouth. By July 25, 2012, all four Queens tunnel drives were complete.
  On January 27, 2016, the final major contract for the construction of East Side Access was awarded for the construction of four railroad platforms and eight tracks for the new Grand Central Terminal. The project was initially scheduled to be completed by 2009, but as of August 2017, the opening date of East Side Access was tentatively projected to be December 2023 or late 2023. By April 2018, the MTA was looking to start passenger service in December 2022, at an estimated cost of $11.1 billion.
caption: Lower level tracks
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